“Odds life!” jeered Sir Jasper. “You stimulate me! So fastidious?”
“Nay!” Young Bellairs flung a fine black eye about him. “So virtuous,” said he, his voice sinking quite an octave deeper than its usual gay note.
There was another laugh; and then a silence; and then Sir Jasper repeated drawling:
“So virtuous? It all depends what the virtue is—eh, gentlemen? There’s prudence, now—they tell me ’tis much practised of the French.”
“What am I to take out of that, sir?”
“Why lad, you may take it that Miss knows her value. With all due deference to your good looks, you might fail where one like myself might succeed.”
“Meaning, Sir Jasper——?”
“Meaning, Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs, that little milliners, especially if they’ve been in Paris, may have learnt to have an eye to the main chance.”
There was again much and loud merriment. The four other gentlemen looked at the one handsome youth of the party as if it were agreeable to see his comb cut.
“Gad, if there’s any betting going on it, I’ll back Jasper,” said Sir James Devlin, with that cold smile of his which seemed to blight where it rested. “But the mischief’s in it, who’d take up the wager at such odds? What? Sweet, penniless Romeo in the one scale, and rich Sir Paris in the other, and Juliet a French milliner, Pshaw!”